Sad. I know. That was crankwalk. The crank probably developed lateral play from thrust bearing failure, and the rods were hitting the block. If it was crankwalk, the casting defect and swiss-cheese thrust bearing that caused that problem isn't in every car they built. That was less than 4% of the '95-'99 turbo cars, and most prevalent in the manual transmissioned variety. If she had one of the 96% that made it past 60k miles, she'd probably never have had a problem with it. It's a bitch to go through something like that, and I agree that it sucks royally. Mitsubishi replaced her motor at no cost, didn't they? They did that for everyone that had the problem under warranty and ate that cost, but many people got shafted and had to fix it themselves if it happened after the drivetrain warranty expired. They offered extended warranties on the drivetrain to all new car buyers, so they at least tried to help.

IMO though, the car is a nice enough and cheap enough car to fix considering the performance it offers. You can get a brand new 7-bolt assembled shortblock for under $600 if you know where to look. And it's not so hard on the eyes when it's fixed. But not all of them are going to do it, and the average person looking for cheap performance isn't really going to mind as much.

I got lucky with mine. Broke 2 transmissions from pushing the hell out of it, but when I pulled my motor apart at 123k, the bores were still crosshatched. The valves were clean and the seats were perfect. The bearings hadn't even worn, the coating on them was still fully in tact. It never leaked a drop of anything, either. It's a shame really, I could have thrown a new timing belt on it and run it for another 100k miles. But, I also have a '95 and knew what crankwalk was, and don't think I didn't lie awake shaking in fear of my car doing that. Thank God it didn't, and won't.